Necrovirus: A Zombie Apocalypse

by James King

  His jaw fell yet further open, and black saliva cascaded onto his chest.

  Slowly, step by step, but with mounting speed, the thing that had once been Carl Baker shambled down the alley. Its arms swung, its legs staggered, its head hung lopsided on its shoulders, it mouth drooled saliva. And from its eyes, tears dripped: black, gummy, like beads of oil oozing onto his cheek, glinting in the strong summer sun. Tears wept, perhaps, for a time when zombies were only something that you saw on a DVD or a TV series.

  It staggered toward the bloody feast.

  Twelve

  Bryan Devlin was singing the tune to Jerusalem. It had always been his father’s favourite hymn, something that he’d often belt out while hoeing the weeds out on the Crossroads field, or in the bath, his voice stark and firm and strident across the dampened tiles. The song always reminded Bryan of his father, and his father was, in his mind, strength and competence and courage. So, in times of crisis, when such strength was needed, Bryan sang Jerusalem.

  And such a time was now.

  “Bring me my bow of burning GOLD,” Bryan crooned, “bring me my arrows of DE - SIRE!”

  He had opened the window a crack, enough so that he could get his rifle through it. And, through the open window, he could smell them: ripe, rotting, fetid, an ultimate odour of human death, huge and awful in this increasingly hot summer day. For a moment, Bryan was forced to withdraw from the window: gagging, choking, sickened, the singing of Jerusalem temporarily suspended. But not for long. The hour of reckoning had come – the day of days, the time of The Apocalypse – and he could not stop. He must take arms and face the foe head on.

  “I will not CEEEASSSEE from restless FIGHTTT!!”

  Bryan sang, his voice suddenly unsteady, wavering, perhaps a tad uncertain, but he fought against his fears. He brought the gun back up, sliding its barrel through the open window, pointing its muzzle out to the warm day. The muzzle wandered, trembled, and he realised that his body that was trembling. A fit of the shakes had seized him, as rigorous and sickening as an alcoholic’s morning-after delirium. Bryan hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol in years: this seizure was brought on by fear, pure and simple: nauseous, cold-skin, sweat-breaking fear. The images that he had seen within the last half an hour played within his memory. The helicopter crashing, the ball of fire, the black mushroom cloud ascending, the ultimate symbol of Armageddon. The young man, wandering through the corn: a worshipper at an unholy shrine. And the burning men, the dead stumbling, howling into the blue sky.

  For all his premonition of doom, Bryan knew that what he had witnessed Should Not Be, and the realisation crashed down upon him, its horror like a nightmare dragged into the waking day, and his body shuddered as truly and as deeply as it would have done beneath an axe-blow.

  “...nor shall my SWORD sleep in my HANNDDDD!”

  Bryan wailed the words out, his voice falling stark and desperate around the farm house’s old plaster walls. He fought against the shakes, and gripped onto his rifle as though it were a life line in a storming ocean. He ran his sight along his shaft, and sought to focus his blurring vision on the closest of them, of these Harbingers of the Apocalypse.

  “until I BUILD JERU-SALEM, IN ENGLAND’S GREEN AND PLEASANT LANNNDDDD!!”

  England’s green and pleasant land... but it wasn’t pleasant anymore. Not on this pure, warming, sunlit July morning. The distant meadows were green enough, and the trees were ripe and full, the sky a faultless blue, and the corn was golden and crisp as fresh baked bread... but what walked through it: what stumbled and lurched and floundered and staggered, was not pleasant, was not verdant, was not crisp and speaking of life. Green, liquefying, stinking, maggot-ridden, and fly-blown, they shambled toward the farmhouse, things of plague, things of disease, things of quarantine, epidemic and apocalypse. Their jaws hung low, their mouths drooled hideous black vomit, their eyes were as blank as the abysses between the stars, and the moving meat of their bodies just as cold. Centipedes crawled from gazing sockets, insects writhed within rotting hair, while maggots dumped themselves from ancient, festering wounds. Their meat and ancient rags were alive with the restless fauna of the grave. All was corruption, all was coldness, all was a kind of dreadful zero... and worse, beyond all of this, was that it was impossible. Impossibility brought to rotting life, impossibility beneath the blue sky and high sun, impossibility, shambling forward through the corn.

  Bryan aimed his rifle. His cold, sweating hands held it firm. His eye squinted down the barrel. His beard splayed against the rifle butt, his lips, slowly moving, but the song quietened now, slow, whispered, almost prayerful...

  “I will not cease from restless fight...”

  The worse thing was, Bryan realised, that he recognised some of them. Not all of them. The rotted ones, the deep-corrupted ones, the skeletonised ones, the ones that the Last Of Days had called forth from the cemetery ground – they were unknown to him. Just rot, just putridity, just Legion brought forth to walk upon desecrated ground and pollute the perfect corn. But the others, the fresh ones, the recently beguiled... oh yes, he recognised them. And, as he gazed upon their pale and perfect dead faces, he found that he was able to summon their names. And, on remembering their names, he realised that they were nothing less than a roll-call of all the town of Alchester’s denizens as known to Bryan Develin.

  First... there was Burt Jones from Burnt Acre Farm just a few fields over. Burt and Bryan’s father had been rivals back in the day, two farmers who had vied to sell the best grain and breed the best suckler cows. Burt had won, mostly by virtue of the fact that he had lived longer than Bryan’s father, and had sons who were able to keep the farm going once he’d retired - unlike Bryan, who had failed at being a farmer just as he had failed at almost everything else. Burt wasn’t too clever now though. His jaw hung open and streamed black drool, his eyes were blank balls, his flesh as pallid as a slaughtered pig. And over there was Bob Walker, the guy who had used to drive the tractor on the Devlin farm. Bob had been a teenager back then, his face mottled with acne, his hair done up into a 1980s mullet. Both acne and mullet had long gone now though, leaving a man who was somewhere in his fifties with iron grey hair and work roughened hands. Those hands now hung to either side, and were hooked into claws, as though some terrible spasm had contracted them and, like Burt, he was blank eyed and drooling mouthed. There were women too: Daisy Collins, the woman who had run the small holding over at the northern edge of Alchester. She’d started a herd of goats, and at first everyone had laughed – goats! You can’t make any profits out of goats, the regulars down at The Wheatsheaf had chortled – but she’d proved them all wrong. Somehow, she’d run the goat herd for something like two years, and had earned enough money for it to be a going concern. Cheese, apparently, was the main product. Bryan had no idea how anyone could earn a living out of goat’s cheese, but then – he’d never been a particularly good farmer, and certainly not a good business man. Now, Daisy was looking a little bit like goat’s cheese herself, and cheese that had been left out in the hot sunlight for too long: pale, fetid, on the turn, rotting, and again the blank eyes, the black drooling mouth, the teeth that somehow looked crooked and too long. And then, not far from Daisy, and closest of all to the farmhouse, young Emma Branswick...

  This gave Bryan pause. Emma was only about twelve years old. About a year or so ago, she’d had the job of delivering the newspaper to the Devlin farm, all the way from Mr Wharton’s newsagents in town. That was before Bryan had decided that all newspapers – and indeed all magazines, television, and internet – was full of mind corroding rubbish, and had stopped buy them. He hadn’t been sorry to read his final newspaper. He had been sorry, though, to see the last of young Emma. She would ride all the way out here on her Raleigh bike, rain or shine, and was always a cheery girl. She had always called him “Mr Devlin” too – which was something that Bryan liked. Respect from youngsters to their elders was important, but was something you didn’t tend to see too much of these days. Whe
n Emma had ridden off on her Raleigh bike down Pear Lane for the last time on that day last June, Bryan had felt a certain, strange, but undeniable twinge of sadness. It was almost as though Emma had been his last friend, his final relationship with the outside world, and once his paper deliveries were over, and she had gone; then his isolation had been all but complete.

  But now Emma was back. Her Raleigh bike was nowhere to be seen, but she was wearing the same bright blue jeans that he always remembered her wearing, plus the same black t-shirt that had some pop singer on the front. But it was a different Emma who was wearing it. A blank eyed Emma. A drooling jawed Emma. An Emma that lurched and staggered and clutched viciously at the air in front of her as though she were fighting invisible demons. And she was the one nearest to the farm house, so it made sense to shoot her first.

  Bryan licked his lips with a tongue that felt like a strip of leather, and then sighted along the barrel of the gun. He was no expert shot, but the girl was in range, (or the thing that had been a girl, he must tell himself that, this wasn’t Emma anymore), he had her in his sights, and so all he needed to do was pull the trigger. But still... Emma. A child of twelve. Christ, he couldn’t do it. Despite her blank eyes, despite her slime-salivating mouth, despite the high, vicious snarling that proceeded from her mouth – she was a child. She held her arms out to him, and though he knew that it was a gesture of aggression, it still might have been love - or a plea for help.

  Bryan’s eyes suddenly felt wet. He quickly put a hand to his eyes and wiped them dry. He shook his head, his breath coming in ragged, watery gasps, and re-sighted along the barrel. Still there, well in range, but oh God, oh dear God, a child...

  Do it now! He told himself, leave it any longer and she’ll be too close, you won’t be able to get a fix on her once she gets right up to the walls. And anyway – she’ll be the first one and the worse one. Once you’ve killed little Emma Branswick who used to ride out here on her Raleigh bike and deliver you your newspaper, then killing the rest will be a doddle. Burt Jones, Bob Walker, Daisy Collins and her damn goat herd – you can shoot every last one with a dry eye and a heart of stone...

  And that was right of course. Emma Branswick. The first and the worse, the sacrifice that this coming of The Apocalypse demanded: her cranium the inaugural explosion of blood and bone in a mounting tide of violence.

  “I will not cease from restless fight,” said Bryan, and he was not singing now. Now, all of the music had gone.

  He sighted along the barrel. His finger increased its pressure, metal creaking upon metal. Little Emma Branswick staggered into view. Here’s your paper, Mr Devlin, I brought it for you all the way from Alchester High Street, and the headlines are big and black, and speaking of Apocalypse, huge in their dreadful inky doom... and for the last time, he remembered her, climbing onto her Raleigh bike, cycling off down Pear Lane, her light blond hair trailing back across her shoulder, the strong sunlight glinting from the chrome of her bike, winking brightly, causing bright and dazzling motes to swim before his sight.

  He pulled the trigger.

  A bucking punch into his shoulder: a deafening report that filled the bedroom, and left his ears buzzing for a moment.

  And Emma’s head was gone, reducing, a fine spray of red and grey and black, fanning outward, the blood drops glinting in the strong July sun. Then the explosion was at an end, the mashed viscera flopped backward onto the ruptured neck, coating the shoulders, and the body fell sideways onto the harsh rocky ground. Trembling, shivering, the legs gyrating as though they were still endeavouring to walk, as though they had not yet been told that there was nothing left to guide them.

  And the hands clutched outward, as though in a final beseeching gesture. Here’s your paper, Mr Devlin, here’s your paper, your paper, paper, paper...

  Bryan fell away from the window, the gun sliding form his grip, clattering to the floor. He gagged, retched, and for a moment thought that he was actually going to vomit. The moment passed, but it left him weakened, horrified, sickened at himself and what he had just perpetrated, at what he had been capable of perpetrating.

  But he knew that he must do it again, because, outside the window, he could hear moanings, yelpings, shriekings... The Apocalypse was not over. It had barely begun, and he must greet it with fire before he was taken down by its doom.

  Wiping his lips with a trembling hand, Bryan seized the gun back up. He jabbed it back through the window, taking his sight along it, and once again increased the pressure on the trigger. The hour had come. The first had been the worse. But now the Harbingers of the Apocalypse would fall before him like corn before a scythe.

  He squeezed the trigger, and righteous thunder once again boomed across the crumbling plaster of the farmhouse walls.

  Thirteen

  Doctor Christian Morrell stormed down the corridor that led back toward his laboratory. He was almost there, when a door opened off to his left – a door leading to one of the smaller research labs – and a voice called out from the darkness beyond.

  “Father... I take it that you’re looking for me...?”

  Morrell stalled in mid stride, his face a painting of doom in the corridor’s dim half light, his hair standing in electric shock profusion from his head. It was as though he had been electrocuted by his own anger. Having come to a halt, he remained completely still for a moment, and then slowly turned toward the open door.

  It was, of course, Felix who had spoken. There in the darkness: brooding, nocturnal, vampire-like. Christian Morrell hadn’t seen his son yet, but he didn’t need to see him. The voice was its own clarion note, its own whisper of doom. And, though he had been searching for the voice and its owner, he was suddenly full of trepidation for the scene that was about to be enacted, and for the questions that were about to be asked. Was he afraid of his own son? Yes, damn it, yes. He might as well admit it. He, Doctor Christian Morrell, top of his field, lord of all he surveyed within this closed and stifling world of Raddex’s scientific wing – he – he - was afraid of his own son.

  “Father...” the voice said again out of the darkness, “...surely thou will not forsake me...?”

  And then a titter: high, deranged, evil. Sounding, Morrell reflected, like the sound of a virus – if indeed it were ever possible for a virus to make a sound – growing, insinuating, seething, utterly evil... hell, he must be letting the events of the day get to him if he was exposing himself to such fancy, but still... an icy note played along his spine, causing flesh to crawl.

  Slowly, Morrell turned toward the opened doorway, and stepped toward the darkness. At last he reached its threshold, and then he stepped through. For a moment he was blinded, the darkness seemingly absolute, like some giant block of matter lying within the confines of the laboratory. But then slowly, his eyes adjusted, his night vision asserted itself, and it revealed the thin contours of his son, stood in the middle of the room: thin, like an arrangement of living, breathing shadow.

  “What are you doing here?” Morrell asked at last. His voice fell in the confines of the laboratory: dark, heavy, fetid, the very timbre of it sounding weighted down with lead. He realised that he was breathing heavily too: gasping, snorting, like an angry bull. He supposed that most of it had been brought on by his hasty flight down the corridor - most but not all. Some of it was fear, some of it outright terror, the sensation of an animal pulled bucking toward a killing pen. And all the while, his cadaverous son just stood there in the shadows, smiling at him.

  “What am I doing here?” Felix asked at last, “why, father, I’m doing the very same thing as you.”

  “Which is?”

  “Hiding...”

  Morrell surprised himself with a laugh: sudden, harsh, vicious, “hiding – ah! Hiding... and well you might hide, Felix Morrell. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you have the slightest inkling of what mischief you have brought about? Even now the army are being deployed to establish a cordon around this town of Alchester. Hundreds of hours of manpower
- ,”

  Felix offered a bark of his own harsh laughter, “since when did you care about the army’s logistical issues, father?”

  “Since my son decided he was going to be an idiot and put thousands of lives at risk just so that he could prove a point.”

  Felix was silent for a moment. Morrell could sense his son’s rage, seething in the laboratory’s black atmosphere. It looked like he’d hit where it hurt by calling Felix an idiot. Morrell experienced a fleeting moment of triumph – but it was soon swept away by a huge and overwhelming feeling of anger and helplessness. That he should have brought such a being as Felix into the world: selfish, violent, unpredictable, and undoubtedly dangerous. It had always been that way with the boy. But his behaviour had become worse – much worse – over the last twelve months or so.

  “I’m not an idiot, father,” Felix said at last, cutting through Morrell’s thoughts. “Idiots allow themselves to be dictated to by others. Idiots become the lackeys of others, the yes men, the toadies, the slaves. Idiots are just little pawns that are moved around by far greater forces on the great chessboard of life,” Felix offered a small titter, “no father. I am not an idiot.”

  Morrell made no immediate reply. Instead, he stepped further into the shadows of the laboratory, allowing himself to be consumed still further by its darkness. A shiver worked its way through his meat, and he drew his lab coat further around him.

  “Cold in here, wouldn’t you say?” Morrell said at last.

  Felix remained silent, a pale wraith in the gloom.